“A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man” – Initial Reception

The score(s) next to each publication’s review and the average rating is an interpretation of the reviews by Literature’s Pretty Long History.

Critics:

Serialized Installments: The Egoist (February 2, 1914-September 1, 1915)

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The Egoist

March 1, 1916

Full Review

“During its appearance in our pages, the notice of publishers was drawn to its value quite voluntarily by a very well-known (and very successful!) writer; and had Mr. Joyce consented to bow to the taste of the publishers’ “readers,” and alter or delete certain words and phrases and rewrite certain sections in order to bring his work a little nearer the popular level, it would have been published “through the trade.” But Mr. Joyce refused to comply with these requirements, with the result that no publisher would touch the book. Accordingly, we decided to publish it ourselves. Even so, the same difficulties cropped up again, and the printer declined to print except subject to certain excisions. Happily, a printer has now been found who is willing to print without deletions, and it is to be hoped that Mr. Joyce’s work will at last, and without meeting with further difficulties, see the light of publication in the shape which he conceived it to take. If so, he will have to be congratulated not only upon his tenacity and courage in holding to what he knows his own work should be, but also on having won for the critical, understanding intellect standing-room on a portion of the territory now held specially sacred to exhibitions of a vapid sentimentality trapped out with a furtive salaciousness.”

Harriet Shaw Weaver

The Drama

February 1916

Full Review

“Mr. Joyce is undoubtedly one of our best contemporary authors. He has written a novel, and I am quite ready to stake anything I have in this world that that novel is permanent. It is permanent as are the works of Stendhal and Flaubert.”

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

General Review(s)

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The Liberator

October 1918

Full Review

“THIS Irishman, Joyce, has a rich flavor. With relish I have dined off his stories, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” “Dubliners” and “Ulysses,” the latter now appearing serially in The Little Review, but his play “Exiles” is a dish of another essence.”

P. R.

The Dial

September 19, 1918

Full Review

“The “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” is, paradoxically, less a portrait than these stories in “Dubliners.”” Ostensibly and successfully the biography of a young man of sensitive imagination bent upon the difficult career of letters, it is yet primarily a cross-section of contemporary Irish middle-class life.”

Scofield Thayer

The Evening Post

July 5, 1918

Full Review

“Only recently the young Irishman James Joyce made a certain hit in Great Britain with his “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and his ‘Dubliners.””

Anonymous

The Literary Guide And Rationalist Review

June 1918

Full Review

“It is a strnage, fragmentary, arresting work, with purple patches of genius and foul stains of grossness and vulgarity.”

Anonymous

The Freeman’s Journal

May 18, 1918

Full Review

“Mr. James Joyce, I fancy, rather than Mr. George Birmingham, is his ideas of a modern Irish novelist, although he is far from emulating the stercoraceous veracity of “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.””

E. A. B.

To-Day

May 1918

Full Review

““A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” is not only an original book; it strikes us as fundamentally true.”

John F. Harris

The Future

May 1918

Full Review

“Joyce’s earlier book, “Dubliners,” contained several well-constructed stories. several sketches rather lacking in form. It was a definite promise of what was to come. There is very little to be said in praise of it which would not apply with greater force to “A Portrait.” I find that whoever reads one book inevitablv sets out in search of the other.”

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

Supplemental Notice(s)

“IT is unlikely that I shall say anything new about M r. Joyce’s novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I have already stated that it is a book worth reading and that it is written in good prose. In using these terms I do not employ the looseness of the half-crown reviewer.” — The Egoist (February 1917)

“Joyce is the best prose writer of my decade.” — The Little Review (August 1917)

Pearson’s Magazine

May 1918

Full Review

“What really makes “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” strange to English and American people is that it gives a glimpse into a new life—into the life that has been shaped by Catholic culture and Catholic tradition.”

Padraic Colum

Supplemental Notice(s)

“There is a great deal of truth in this. But even as he wrote it, was not John Eglinton cast into doubt by the emergence of the author of a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? Here is a writer belonging to the Milesian Irish by his social and intellectual tradition who yet accomplishes something more modern than anything any of the Modern Irishmen have done.” — The New Republic (September 14, 1918)

“JAMES JOYCE’S “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” is dated “Dublin 1904, Trieste 1914.” The action of “Exiles” is indicated as passing in 1912. The play, therefore, succeeds the novel in time. But if “Exiles” be more recent than “Portrait of the Artist,” it is far less modern. In the novel James Joyce created a form that was individual and distinctively modern, that suggested new horizons.” — The Nation (October 12, 1918)

The Sun

March 17, 1918

Full Review

“Ulysses conducts us further along in life with STEPHEN DEDALUS, whose boyhood was in the Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man.”

Anonymous

Supplemental Notice(s)

“B. W. Huebseh is about to put forth a three act play by Janes Joyce, whose Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man got praise from H. G. Wells, but eluded the intellects of others for a whole afternoon. The play is called Exiles.” — The Sun (March 3, 1918)

The Scots Pictorial

March 16, 1918

Full Review

“He will write of things as they are, or not at all; he will have the truth at all costs, and nothing but the truth. The pity is that, with so much beauty in life, he should so persistently stick to the muck and scum of things.”

Anonymous

学鐙

March 1918

Full Review

“『一青年として画家の肖像』に対する僕の第一の注意はこの文学的法式の上にあったのです。清澄明瞭で如何にもきびきびした文体、叙述の確適で何処までも経済的な省略は僕を驚かし且つ喜ばしめました。僕は著者の現在よりは勿論その将来におけるポピュリティを祝しました。”

野口 米次郎

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De Nieuwe Gids

January 1918

Full Review

“Iedere pagina van Zola geeft sensationeler naturalistiese details dan deze sobere Ierse woordkunstenaar. En toch schijnt het voor een Engelsman nog te machtig te zijn.”

Pieter Endt

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Journal De Genève

December 31, 1917

Full Review

“Singulier ouvrage, mélange de matérialisme et d’idéalisme sans nuances.”

F. Guillermet

The Bulletin

December 22, 1917

Full Review

“The story records the undercurrents of Irish character and has a significance that makes it worth while.”

Anonymous

The Butte Daily Post

November 10, 1917

Full Review

“Mrs. Clark reviewed and read several extracts from the book, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” by James Joyce. It is psychological study and a not altogether pleasant picture.”

Anonymous

Supplemental Notice(s)

Reprinted by The Butte Miner (November 11, 1917) and The Anaconda Standard (November 11, 1917)

The Courier-Journal

October 29, 1917

Full Review

“It has a technique and style of its own, wonderfully well done. But it is not to be recommended for general reading.”

Anonymous

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